The present invention relates to improvements in apparatus for collating sheet material articles, especially to newspaper stuffing apparatus wherein folded outer sections or jackets of newspapers are assembled with inner sections in openable pockets which are transported along an endless path. In such apparatus, the sections are furnished by a series of hoppers or analogous feeding devices which are adjacent the path for the pockets. Each jacket is caused to open before the respective pocket reaches a feeding device for inner sections so that the inner section or sections can be introduced into the opened jacket.
Heretofore known newspaper stuffing and analogous apparatus exhibit the drawback that the jackets are not invariably held in open positions during transport past the feeding devices for inner sections and that the jackets are likely to shift in their pockets prior to introduction of inner sections. This can interfere with automatic assembly of newspapers and/or with the operation of devices which evacuate and/or stack the newspapers. Furthermore, presently known stuffing apparatus do not have any reliable means for insuring that each of the jackets is opened up in the same way, i.e., that the inner sections are introduced between preselected sheets of the respective jackets. As a rule, it is desirable to open each jacket in the middle, i.e., to introduce one or more inner sections between the two halves of a folded but partially opened jacket.